Baseball giant George Steinbrenner, New York Yankees owner, dies of heart attack

Steinbrenner suffered a heart attack at 6:30am today in Tampa, Florida, a source with the baseball team said.

The Yankees won 11 pennants and seven World Series titles during Steinbrenner's ownership, which began in 1973. He bought the club for $8.8 million and turned it into a multibillion-dollar sports empire.

Steinbrenner, nicknamed "The Boss", had been suffering from failing health, the result of a series of strokes, for the past few years.

He was a well-known figure in US popular culture, often pictured on the back pages of New York's tabloids wearing his trademark white turtleneck sweater under a blue blazer and was regularly made fun of in the TV sitcom Seinfeld.